"Ultimate Goals" change, of course. This is just mine, as of now - late 2004.
It's been said that it's a pretty silly goal for a cripple. Other people (the majority, luckily for me) seem to think that it takes guts to dream something like this while bedridden. Feel free to make of it what you will.
My ultimate goal is to buy 5-10 acres of land, up in the country. Probably up in north-western Victoria, Australia, somewhere, but other places in Victoria, New South Wales, or even South Australia aren't out of the question entirely.
If it has a cottage/house on it, then I'd like to renovate it myself - to do it up to make it nice and livable. If there's no house then to build either a strawbale house (if the site is flattish) or an earthship (if the site is sloping significantly).
Once I have somewhere to lay my head at the end of the day I can live there. Next phase is to add a huge big amount permaculture/organic gardens to grow all the herbs, fruits and veggies that I'll need to feed myself and donate to friends not so lucky to have green thumbs.
Also a bunch of fruit and nut trees - lemon, orange, lime, locut, avocado and walnut come to mind (depending on the climate). And things like passionfruit and grappe vines (for eating and sultanas, not for wine!), and maybe even raspberry canes if the weather is right.
I'll also raise some chickens and perhaps a few ducks too if I have a dam or somewhere damp for them to enjoy, and I can eat the eggs (if I can tolerate them again - I'm intolerant of dairy/eggs at the moment) or sell at a local market or something.
I'd love a goat for lawnmowing purposes too if I have enough land to keep it happy.
Of course, a space for compost bins and a worm farm and ... well, lots and LOTS of native plantings to revegitate part of the area and attract birds and bees to polinate my fruit and veggies.
All this is all very well, but unless my parents have unexpectedly died and left me some money, then I'm going to need a job to buy those annoying things like clothes and 'net access that you can't grow!
I'd like to work in a non-stressful job - as little as I could get away with and still pay for anything I needed, like some electricity, water, mortgage, internet, etc. I keep coming back to imagining something like working in a family-run healthfood shop, or something akin, would be really nice. Don't want to work in anything related to computers, really, it's too stressy (usually), and even if I ever get healthy enough to DO all this I'll still have to be extremely careful with my stress levels for the rest of my life.
So there. That's my dream.
Unfortunately you have to be able to do things like dig in the garden to manage stuff like that, and I'm at the stage where even feeding myself with a spoon is not always possible. So it's a long, long way off. But I listen to books from the talking book library about permaculture, and self-sufficiency (I'm not aiming for *total* self-sufficiency, just partial, but it's interesting to read them), and organic gardens, and earthships and strawbale houses, and all sorts of related topics. It keeps me occupied and keeps me happy and oriented towards a hopeful future, at the very least!
